Tasmania can pay for its own FTTP NBN, says Fifield

news Communications Minister Mitch Fifield yesterday issued a statement stating the broadband situation on the West Coast of Tasmania was already being handled through the NBN company’s Technology Choice policy, which allows for Australians to pay for their own NBN upgrade.

Residents of areas such as Queenstown in Western Tasmania were previously scheduled to have received a full Fibre to the Premises rollout as part of the previous Labor Government’s original NBN plan.

However, under the Coalition’s revised Multi-Technology Mix approach to the NBN, they will instead only receive satellite broadband, with the NBN company not planning to deploy any fixed broadband infrastructure to some areas of the state, despite the fact that townships such as Queenstown already have ADSL broadband over Telstra’s copper network, and several thousand local residents.

However, in response, Fifield issued a statement claiming that Labor’s policy was “unfunded” and that the issue was already being handled.

“Labor’s unfunded announcement today that it expects NBN to provide $29 million to pay for its election promises in North West Tasmania, sets an extraordinary precedent for the misuse of a Government Business Enterprise (GBE),” the Communications Minister said.

“Under the GBE Guidelines, the NBN is empowered to act commercially and independently when building the NBN.”

“Labor’s announcement demonstrates they have learnt nothing from the last time they messed up the NBN. Under Labor, the NBN was one of the most poorly managed infrastructure projects in the history of the Commonwealth. More than $6 billion was spent over four years to connect just 51,000 users to Labor’s network.”

“Under the Coalition, NBN has flexibility in network and technology design decisions as long as the economics stack up. Under this approach, close to two million Australian homes and businesses can now access the NBN.”

Fifield said that in North West Tasmania, local calls for fixed line broadband were “already being considered through NBN’s existing Technology Choice policy”.

“The significant difference between the Technology Choice option and the promise made by Labor today is that it is unfunded. NBN does not have a spare $29 million available to fund Labor’s empty election promises,” the Minister said.

“Labor must to come clean on which other towns will be disadvantaged by this intervention in Tasmania.Labor also needs to clarify if this promise involves the use of Fibre to the Premises, which in Tasmania, has been mired in lengthy construction delays and rollout challenges.”

It is unclear what precisely Fifield is referring to with respect to the issue being handled under the NBN company’s Technology Choices program.

The program theoretically allows residents, businesses and organisations such as councils to work with the NBN company to fund upgrades to their broadband infrastructure. For example, in this case, it may allow the Tasmanian communities concerned to pay to receive fixed broadband infrastructure, rather than satellite.

47 COMMENTS

*sighs* the Libs really dont comprehend the concept of “National Infrastructure” do they….

Seriously folks, make sure your friends and family know the LNP only care about themselves and need to be kicked out! Perosnally I’m hoping for an ALP/Green minority Gov, they got far more good work done for the benefit of 90% of Australians than the Libs ever have!

What would you expect? One could be forgiven for thinking the L/NP run a corporate protection racket to protect the interests of their donors and any future personal dynasties they have growing in the background.

Crony capitalist politicians are a direct result of corporate donations and the sooner they are banned the better for our democratic process.

For a minister to say that an infrastructure project was “unfunded” is to be disingenuous regarding the nature of our Sovereign Issued Fiat Currency.

The Federal Government spends money into existence; it does NOT have to raise money by way of taxes to pay for anything (money via taxes is destroyed) and neither does it need to borrow its own money as it is the only entity that can legally issue new money.

Really sick of politicians playing the debt line and “we’re running out of money” lie.

We don’t do sovereign issued fiat currency. We do privately issued debt based fiat currency like most other countries. Largest and most profitable scam in the world. For the government to get additional cash outside of income it needs to either borrow from the markets or put up collateral to the RBA (bonds, etc) who will issue cash as a sort of reverse mortgage at interest. The federal government borrows money into existence just like the rest of us. Money is destroyed when it is paid back. Some governments have sovereign banks – we are at war with them – or have had sovereign banks – we went to war with them – or recently tried to re implement sovereign gold based currencies – we went to war with them as well. Bankers run the world. Politicians and governments are merely their hired thugs. Giving the illusion of choice while tasked with maintaining the collateral on the debt (our land, our resources and our future productivity).

When will they stop spewing B.S. 6 billion over 4 years, starting from scratch, building POI, design and planning, sourcing contracts and materials, forcing telstra to cooperate, pricing for pits and ducts, asbestos issues.

Then this government comes in and claims all the good stuff when they didn’t even do a thing for 2 years (Silly trials with ‘one’ user showing near 100Mbps “sync rates”, such idiots). Fully costed and ready to go.. my ass!!. 25Mbps is all we’ll ever need. Minimum 25Mbps to ALL by 2016. How can people believe these lies. I really dislike the coalition. If the media didn’t cover for them they’ll have been under royal commissions and all.

The Technology Choice Program would be prohibitively expensive, if even available to this region.

NBN’s problem is the West coast of Tasmania is without sufficient backhaul (mainly microwave). I know, you all believed Quigley when he spoke about his transit network competing in 2015. The cost estimate to provision transit fibre is $20-30m alone, plus the cost of connecting premises. Other options might be worth investigating but not at an NBN scale.

Know nothing of technology, nothing of finance nor accounting and Labor’s proposals (NBN & west coast miniNBN) is attractive (in these forums they gloat about their ignorance).

However exactly the same Green/Left fantasies have been sold to the 6k (and falling) residents of the region for decades, as with most of the State, that has seen most economic activity wiped out. Social and value adding engagements like work replaced with bumping into each other at the ATM when latest welfare payments are dumped into their accounts.

I think most people agree with your first point about the Technology Choice Program being prohibitively expensive.

What’s your basis for the figure of $20m – $30m in your second paragraph? Is that related to the $29m mentioned in the article? It’ll probably end up being more than that, most projects of this scale go over budget, which is already in evidence numerous times over for the NBN under both governments. Nothing to see here, move along.

I’m going to skip the third paragraph altogether.

Your fourth paragraph is just a rant about the ideology of politics and its sociological effects which, whilst the topic is interesting, has nothing to do with the NBN or technology. Cut that out.

It seems you got progressively angry as you wrote your post. Take a breath and work out what you’re trying to say. You won’t be persuasive if you’re not making a valid, logical point backed up by facts and figures.

Does anyone have any real information about the backhaul to this area ? Is it really the case that there is insufficient backhaul ? Is there fiber to those towns already ? How are the existing ADSL connections in the towns serviced ? Is it the case that there is fiber, but for some reason nbn cannot get access to it ? Or does nbn have some rule requiring redundant fiber ?

Telstra has a high capacity digital radio system servicing the west coast. They do not have any fibre down that way (other than to link the local exchange to the nearest radio tower).
TAS Networks have fibre (OGPW) on their high voltage transmission lines. NBN had previously commenced negotiations with them for an access agreement.
NBN does not require a diverse fibre path. They already have many FANs serviced by unprotected spurs. While this does increase the chance of an outage it is sometimes the only cost effective option and these towns are already on Telstra’s unprotected radio “spur”.

“However, under the Coalition’s revised Multi-Technology Mix approach to the NBN, they will instead only receive satellite broadband, with the NBN company not planning to deploy any fixed broadband infrastructure to some areas of the state, despite the fact that townships such as Queenstown already have ADSL broadband over Telstra’s copper network, and several thousand local residents.”

Can we have Richard’s account removed? The following is trolling and off topic and Renai has already warned him:

However exactly the same Green/Left fantasies have been sold to the 6k (and falling) residents of the region for decades, as with most of the State, that has seen most economic activity wiped out. Social and value adding engagements like work replaced with bumping into each other at the ATM when latest welfare payments are dumped into their accounts.

Probably right. Clearly the return to FTTH/LTE for the west coast is a technical not political decision.

Sadly, unlike your “Astronaut choice” contribution above, I was only able to identify the reason for the regions exclusion and the cost to rectify (substantially more than Labor’s costing).

We could talk about layer 2 wholesale open access networks, traffic classes, bitstreams and required transit capacity to PoI that makes the proposed solution and costing (excludes dark fibre lease) comical however it would only harm the discussion further.

7330 node theoretical uplink drew significant attention in this forum until I & CW identified the actual components. At the time it was argued 2 pairs of fibre reserved (offering up to redundant 20/20gE) for a node servicing couple of hundred premises was a problem. Yet substantially less capacity proposed here for several thousand premises passes without analysis.

a) NBN are not even providing a quote to do a feasibility study – i mean, they will take upwards of 6 months to even get around to telling you how much it will cost to DO a feasability study
b) after feasability studies are done, the costs given are well in excess of what the quoted per premises figures are for fibre
c) even when the quote has been accepted they are still not proceeding with the switch yet, these areas are getting stuck in the ‘design’ phase so the invoice never comes around

also the nbn is turning over staff like crazy, there’s someone new dealing with everything every week. not only that, all the people who deal with the systems left and they’re basically just saying ‘well we will try and sort that out, but the guy who made that system isnt here anymore..’

what a farce

and then this amazing drivel on top of everything. how the fuck does fifield sleep at night?

I’ll ask again as I never seem to receive an answer (let alone a rational one).

Simply… why is it ok Mitch, for you to spend our dollars on FttN, but not FttP?

Especially galling when in the past your conservative apple polishers here, used to scoff at MQ’s $45B for FttP but now are quite ok with BM’s as much as $56B (or $70B if you believe Joe) for what is a retrograde and substandard FttN network?

They get away with it because the media are covering for them (I believe this is happening). Think Gina and Murdoch. LNP have parties with them, they’re ties are strong. They own most of the media in Australia. They can twist things and spew “blame Labor”, “blame Greens” and take peoples eyes away from the important issues. Recent example from murdoch’s news: labor reintroduces carbon tax. From all the twisted information they spewed out about the carbon tax, people start to believe that it’s bad. Re: NBN, near zero coverage. Lucky there’s the internet. Also they stacked the review and director boards with their mates, they can all spew B.S and get away with it. I remember the absurd $80 billion cost for FTTP. Now their doggy mess costs up to $ 56 billion for up to 25 Mbps, +1Mbps from adsl2+. Did the media mention anything? Also about how the legacy networks will cost more to maintain, how they’re not future proof etc. That’s why the LNP can get away with their doggy mess, the media is covering them. Think about it, they made so many mistakes, and all you get from the media and the LNP is “blame labor”.

Also, internet speed is not a “physical” thing. People can’t see it, so they can’t imagine what benefits it will bring to them. Also society now has become more selfish and less imaginative, from what I remember when I first came to Australia (2010). And I point my fingers at the media for it.
Innovation Boom my ass. Continuity and change hahaha. Retarded LNP government.
What a time to be an Australian (got my citizenship earlier this year under “dutton” ugh…)

What me me vomit over M.T’s innovation Nation and start up support etc was that is just an updated modern version of what Whitlam did in the 70’s before there was all the support and funding for innovation and start ups purely because the conservative risk adverse establishment would not fund something that wasn’t guaranteed or mining or agriculture or bricks and mortar.
They were the innovators breaking new ground and learning as they went
Sure some failures but also some very promising advances along with research and patents. Packer and the Libs and the Business sector hated it, it was the unknown and a potential threat, first thing Howard did as treasurer in the Fraser Government was shut it all down bankrupting promising startups with the loss of important patents overseas.
Now suddenly The flexible innovative hero’s following like sheep a well worn track that every country in the world has been doing for decades,
Baaa Baaaa

I thought this government understood the pork barrel. They’re stumping up $50 billion to keep Christopher Pyne in a job. The member for Braddon seems to be quite indifferent to the anger over getting satellite & FTTN. He told the mayor He accused the mayor of Burnie of “talking down Tasmania when she complained about getting FTTN. The government could quite possibly lose up to 3 seats in Tasmania over NBN. Braddon, Lyons & Bass are marginals.

Ok. Fine Mitch. Tasmania can pay for its own FTTP.
Fine . Seriously. Cool. No problemo.
Just pay out of your own pocket, Mitch, for that wonderful FTTP internet that you, along with all other federal pollies, had installed at taxpayers’ expense in 2013. Out of your own pocket. That’s it. Reach in to your own pocket. Slowly now. I know it hurts. But you’ll live. And give me back those tax spondoolies.

Were that a viable option it would seem NBNs prices are even too high for the government to pay for let alone private citizens.
It is just smoke and mirrors to keep saying there is the option there when it is priced out of reach of anybody including government.

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